Readers speak: Sussex County - A Better Wave of Life

Back in November, when Sussex County employees suggested Discover Our Roots as a new slogan to replace the current Your Business Partner slogan, Sussex Council members offered their own three-word response: Not So Much.

In the meantime, little more has been said. But actions usually speak louder than words. The proposed new slogan has been removed from the county’s website. But as catchy as Your Business Partner is, no one is complaining too loudly that it has not been placed on the new website either.

If it were up to the readers of the Cape Gazette and capegazette.com who responded to the newspaper’s call for suggested new slogans, the new slogan would expand to five words: A Better Wave of Life. Submitted by Jeanne and David Shook, this was one of more than 150 slogan ideas suggested. The Cape Gazette editors narrowed those 150 down to 10 finalists and then put them to a vote by our newspaper and website readers. In a month of voting, 1,493 readers weighed in.

Sussex County: A Better Wave of Life garnered 272 winning votes for the Shooks. In second place with 218 votes is Sussex County: Make Yourself At Home; and in a close third is Sussex County: Any Reason, Any Season.

For their winning effort, the Shooks will be receiving a treasure trove of Cape Gazette items including a subscription, a Cape Gazette hat, a Sussex County license tag, a Cape Gazette pen inscribed with the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution and a few other goodies.

We appreciate everyone who participated, taking their time to think about Sussex and how to reduce its essence to just a few words. We will pass on to Sussex Council the results of our contest along with the first three winners.

We don’t expect any swift action. That would be out of character for Lower Slower Delaware.

And I mean that most sincerely. John the Blacksmith once told me that the key to happiness is slow. And not far from that was a recommendation he had for slowing the pace of development in Sussex: outlaw power saws. Come to think of it, that’s just three words. The anti-growth groups in the county missed an opportunity by not suggesting that as the county’s new slogan.

Gordons Pond link progressing

Contractors working on the linking trail in Cape Henlopen State Park, between the Gordons Pond parking lot and the new Herring Point parking lot at the north end of the park, are making solid progress despite this winter’s endless bad weather. Working from the Gordons Pond end, the contractors have started installing the environmentally sensitive screw pilings and attaching the stringers that will eventually hold the decking for the portion of the raised trail crossing a section of marshy turf.

It’s exciting watching this long-awaited link coming to fruition. When complete, it will create an 18-mile loop trail with Lewes on one end and Rehoboth Beach on the other. In between will be miles of maritime forest, dunes and marshes inside sections of Cape Henlopen State Park, east and west of the Lewes-Rehoboth Canal.